Black Panthers

In 1970 Huey Newton gave a speech at Boston college outlining a new ideological direction for the Black Panther Party, Revolutionary Intercommunalism. Newton described his rejection of the idea of black people being an internal colony in the US, that class struggle rather than national liberation was the only route to a communist society (describing the failure of liberation movements in Africa as 'neo-colonialism'), concerns around automation and the working class, and the impossibility of a socialist state in the US (against the position of the Progressive Labor Party), although he still described Vietnam and China as partially liberated.

Hampton discusses Bobby Seale's trial while criticising the reactionary nationalism of Ron Karenga, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka), (unfortunately using some homophobic language in the process). He also mentions the name of the cop (Glove Davis) who was to participate in his assassination a month later.

Albert Woodfox a Black Panther member in Louisiana helped found the Angola Prison chapter of the party to help organise prisoners and resist violence and exploitation from the guards. In retaliation he was forced to spend over 44 years in solitary confinement. The longest solitary confinement term given out in the US prison system.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, founded in Oakland, California. I went to the Oakland Museum of California to see the exhibit "All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50" and it got me to reflect on how the Panthers and other movements of that era affected many radical projects that continued in their legacy.

First of May Anarchist Alliance interviewed Erik D., Secretary of Twin Cities IWW-General Defense Committee (GDC) Local 14. The GDC which has grown to approximately 100 members in Minnesota has become an important pole of struggle for pro-working-class revolutionaries on a number of different fronts, most significantly the year-long struggle against police killings and brutality.

A communiqué issued by the revolutionary socialist cell within the Gay Liberation Front critiquing what they saw as "gay nationalism" and "extreme segregationism" in a document called "gay demands" issued at the Black Panther Party's “Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention Planning Session” in Philadelphia, 5 September 1970. It was distributed at a follow-up BPP convention in Washington DC in November. While we may not agree with all of it, particularly the passages which slip into transphobia, we reproduce it here for reference.

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